State Voices

The level of sexual harassment that I have endured inside of city council is just out of this world. …I would say that there [is] this sort of exoticization, I guess. Like I’m an exotic animal because there [are] not a lot of people like me. …I come in [to a luncheon to welcome new council members] and two colleagues are standing there who I have never met in my whole life. And one of them tells me, ‘Oh, hi. Congratulations on your win. Finally we get somebody pretty to look at.’ …The other colleague, the other council member that was with [him], laughed because he thought it was hilarious. … And you’re like, ‘Oh my God. Where am I? What did I do? These are people I’m going to work with.’ I remember feeling very anxious at that moment."

I think that, at least what I am seeing here in Chicago, is that people are getting way more organized in order to be able to support candidates that they trust. …And in that work there is an understanding that whoever it is that runs needs to be representative of the communities that we live in."

When I finally said, ‘Yes, I’m going to [run for office],’ I also told my [staff], ‘I need you all to remember that I’m a mother. I need you all to remember that I need time with my child. So we are going to have to figure out a childcare situation that includes my child into all of this because I can’t just not see my child. That’s not an option.’ And because of that we created a kid’s area in our campaign office and we had childcare every weekend when we were knocking on doors so that when I came back for lunch I could be with my child. And for other women that wanted to participate in the campaign [and]…be able to leave their kids in childcare — they could go knock on doors and organize or participate in the campaign in whatever way they wanted to. That experience…informs the way in which I structure my ward office because when you come into my ward office the first thing that you have is the kid’s area where, when parents come in with their kids, they know that there’s space for them."

I do think that a lot of the power right now lays in the grassroots, the union organizations like United Working Families, for example, organizations like Mijente, those organizations that have been doing the organizing work for a very, very long time. …They have the power because they have the hands; they have the people that can go knock on doors."

Thinking about yourself as an activist or an advocate and making demands of power, making demands of your government, and then becoming the government, [you have to think about how]…you don’t lose your critique now [that] you’re inside of the system, right? And so…how do you play it? …Depending on the profile of donors, depending on the profile of voters and people who support you, there will be people who are excited about you throwing bombs inside of the House. And there are going to be people who are like, ‘No, we got you elected so you can get stuff done.’ And both of those will be in the ears of your activist candidate, your movement-aligned candidate."

There’s a reason why wealthy people who often are men and not responsible for childcare are the ones who often run for office. …Oftentimes when people are considering running, they are not seriously considering the personal ecology that they are going to need to maintain in order to be successful as an elected official. Thinking about running for state House in Georgia, if you are a millionaire and you have assets and you have childcare and all of that, you absolutely can go work for $17,000 a year. Of course, right? You cannot do that if you are working class, if you are actively involved in rearing children, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so what kind of life do you need, what kind of support do you need in order to sustain a career as an elected official? And even on the federal level, you need support in ways that wealth makes easier [and] gives you access to."

I know we live in an EMILY’s List world and we live in a world where there’s Emerge. And there needs to be more. There just needs to be more…like the aggressive recruiting and preparation and training. …I know that these groups exist; we work with them. We love them and support them. And it’s not enough. It’s just not. And so we should disabuse ourselves of the notion that like, ‘Oh, we’ll be duplicating efforts.’ It’s not enough."

[Power is] the ability to check off items on your political agenda."

When you walk in a room every morning and every morning you are having breakfast with 50 men, and you’re the only woman sitting there, you know, you’d like to think that gets old and you forget about it. Well, you never forget about it."

My cause for concern is that I’ve not seen much change over the years. And I think that’s a precursor of why this state is turning purple. And that concerns me because I am a conservative Republican and we have to have more than angry white men in the party. And if you’re going to have more than that, you have to have more women. And I just haven’t seen that curve being struck. I mean they haven’t tried to pave the road for that and that’s part of the reason why you see the demise [of the Republican Party]."

Sometimes men don’t understand why women need special groups of women – like, ‘Oh, if we had a special group of men, you’d think it was discriminatory.’ It’s because we haven’t been in these positions of leadership and power as long as men have. But I think it’s really, really important that women have sounding boards, that they have mentors, that they have groups that they can go to and share their vulnerabilities and be helped up into the political process. I will tell you that is a major goal of mine."

Women suffer badly from imposter syndrome. And I know myself, when I first started considering running, I questioned myself a lot about ‘why me? Am I really qualified to do this?’ And it wasn’t until somebody said, ‘Well, if you’re not qualified, I don’t know who is,’ [that] I started thinking about it in a different way. And I do think it’s getting better. I think younger women, considerably younger than I am, don’t have it as badly as my generation did, maybe because they are growing up with better role models and examples of women doing these things. …They seem to be much more empowered than we were."